Central Park, maybe especially coming next after Near Death, is a fun and pretty movie. I think we can start with looking at something that I’m realizing more and more is an important Wiseman issue: performance. I think we can say any movie that films people has a performance aspect to it. To see people (actors or not) saying and doing things is one of the reasons we watch movies. Given the theatrical underpinnings of film, we likely expect to see people who in some way perform. I think we could say in Wiseman films already we’ve seen a lot of people who say and do interesting things - doctors in Hospital and Near Death, the base commander in Manoeuvre, Appolonia in Model, some talkative applicants in Welfare - too many examples to enumerate. But I think there’s another level to performance that we should look at - what the difference is when we see people within films who are shown giving performances, that is, appearing before audiences either to speak, sing, play an instrument, dance, or any activity where we see them present themselves in front of others.
What makes this tricky and interesting is that at the same time they’re doing these things, they are also being filmed. Whether filming people changes their behavior is one of the great and much argued questions of documentary films. There are some who will say of course people change their behavior for the camera. There are others, and I think Wiseman has been among them, who say that especially if you film people doing what they usually do anyway, the presence of the camera has little effect. Another argument to be brought forth might be that this is something that a filmmaker can try to minimize in various ways - spending a lot of time with the subject to get them used to filming, using unobtrusive equipment (small cameras, no extra lighting), only filming when there are important things going on that make the presence of a camera less of an issue - plenty of arguments like this can be brought to bear. And another way to look at it might be to say, ok, they know they are being filmed, so what does this extra pressure or additional realization add to the equation? It doesn’t automatically make what’s being filmed false, it just makes it different.
A way past these questions in Wiseman’s case may be his considerable interest in performance itself. If you’re filming dancers or actors, say, and we’ll get to movies with both of those later (and of course we’ve had models), we’re already looking at people in the act of performing, so it brings this process more out into the open. We can see performance, like acting, as an artistic activity in itself - something we want to watch in movies. And I think it’s just dawned on me (duh) with Central Park, that performance is a serious subject for Wiseman. I think looking at this a bit will help to explain important things about his films, and I’m a little surprised at myself that it’s taken twenty-three films for me to figure some of this out. But I suppose that’s why I’m doing this, so it should be a good that we’re getting around to it.
One thing performance helps to explain is why there might be so many sermons and speeches in Wiseman films. One of their attractions is that they are performance opportunities, and some of the people we see offering these are real show-offs. I’ve had trouble sometimes figuring out how much at face value the sermons can be taken, whether we’re meant to be listening closely to the content. I’d say sometimes yes, and sometimes no, which is the alert we should be on anyway - trying to evaluate what people say, what level to take it at, and how to connect it to other things we see and hear. Sort of like life, and like lots of both media and creative work. If we understand a lot of this to be performance, we can appreciate it for its own sake. Take for example the theater teacher we see in a couple of scenes in the beginning of Central Park. That he’s teaching and directing theater to a group of students might tip us off already, but the guy is more than a bit on the wacko side as he starts his talk to them with “In the beginning, there was the word” and adds "If you didn't know language, if you couldn't express yourself, how awful that is, can you imagine?" He’s unnecessarily over the top and pretty out there when he starts working over the students’ recitals from “The Tempest”, and he’s enjoyable just as a character, the kind Wiseman seems to latch onto regularly. But since we’re not so far from the Deaf and Blind films, maybe what he’s saying has things in it worth considering. Ditto even the craziest sermons such as those in Canal Zone and Racetrack, to name just a couple of the extreme examples. Performance is a much bigger subject in Wiseman films than just these talks, but I think they make more sense if appreciated for this aspect of these characters’ public pronouncements. It may also explain a prevalence of ceremonies, both religious (we get a good chunk of a wedding here, complete with a too-talky minister) and secular (such as our many military ceremonies, graduation speeches, and meeting pep talks).
Continuing on in this vein, Central Park is in large measure a performance film, both professional and amateur. On the pro side, we’ve got Luciano Pavarotti (having fun too with a prop wine bottle) and Kathleen Battle no less, and as whenever there’s music in a Wiseman film, even though he’s almost always finding it and not adding it, here we get a good chunk of their aria, straight on and uninterrupted, very much admired and enjoyed simply for itself. Professional too in Central Park are the Australian rock group Midnight Oil, a jazz ensemble, and a blues singer who plays for a bit with his teeth, Hendrix-style, Lavar Burton being filmed doing a “Reading Rainbow” episode, and an African dance troupe. Amateur performances abound, and are usually talented and amusing, and sometimes impromptu. A very good trumpet solo turns out to be just a guy on the grass, and there’s what looks like a polka group having a regular get-together. There’s a terrifically entertaining marching band that’s part of the Gay Pride Parade near the end of the film, who do a version of the appropriately chosen “On Broadway”, and we see them do some fancy steps - marching, turning in a half circle, marching backwards as they play, then turning again doing more fancy steps. The camera takes in the show appreciatively. And they’re followed by a marching and singing group all in red shirts and white pants, singing the inevitable “New York, New York”. With just about all of these performances, Wiseman has a tantalizing technique - we hear them before we see them. It happens so often as to become its own stylistic flourish. The sound frequently comes from a distance as we see people walking towards it or pricking up their ears, then we see face on who’s been producing the sound. He does the same thing with a good number of scenes of spontaneous dancing, the sound of boom boxes playing salsa well before we see a couple of guys with maracas dancing and playing away. It’s like each time we hear music we wait and see who’s producing it, sometimes live professionals and plenty of times just people in the park enjoying themselves.
A special performance segment deserves a little extra attention - Francis Ford Coppola is in the park shooting some of the party scene for his episode of New York Stories, and he’s got a great cinematographer too, Vittorio Storraro. (Coppola’s story is often considered lesser than the Scorsese and Allen pieces, but I’ve always found it completely charming. As it’s co-written and also costumed by Sofia, I think it’s a generous collaboration with his daughter, and can be looked at too as an early work of hers - familiar themes, but that’s another story.) Coppola’s film is deliberately resplendent and excessive, a fairy tale involving a young Arab prince, so it’s quite the contrast with the one Wiseman is making. It’s funny to see Coppola complaining about not getting any shots at all and that it’s been a frustrating day. (Some version close to what we see does make it into his film.) We can view this scene as another Wiseman self-reflexive moment - a film-maker filming a film-maker. Coppola may be complaining about not getting much, but Wiseman has certainly done fine! It’s also quite likely that Coppola and Company spent more that morning than Wiseman’s entire film cost.
In the performance category, and because after all this is New York, we have to note some of the characters who pop up to give little speeches, especially at public meetings. The ones at a meeting about constructing a new tennis court building are especially colorful and quite aware their turns at the microphone are opportunities to express themselves. My fave is the woman who gets up and voices a minority opinion that the current building should go - she gesticulates broadly and speaks loudly in a very New York way and looks like she’s really into her opportunity to run against the current. Earlier there’s a dispute about selling things at a peace rally, and the heated back-and-forths give some peace advocates chances to get really heated. More public performances captured by Wiseman, for sure.
I’m glad I was spotting music in Wiseman way back when, as it really pops out in this film how closely he’s paying attention to using it, even playing with it a bit. I had to run one in particular back a couple of times to see how tricky the sound transitions in his films can be - sometimes sound continuing as a new scene begins. The completely amazing one is when music from that group of folk dancers trails off to the sound of Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew and their ’88 big hit “Risin’ to the Top”. (Too much of the late 80’s can stick in one’s mind.) How he gets the beats of the two completely different kinds of music to match so closely is a wonder to behold, and I’m really not exaggerating. And I’ve said more than enough about songs as performance opportunities and as a Wiseman interest in general, except somehow I missed noting the generous appearance of “Mony Mony” (Tommy James and the Shondells, in case you were wondering), the song played for an exercise warmup for what looks like a thousand woman runners before the start of one of several marathons in Central Park. It’s this film’s version of Simon Says, back in High School, as we dance too much in lock-step to the music.
OK, from performance and music we better get to another absolutely big thing In Central Park, the complete compression of many potentially long stories into extremely brief almost cameo moments, sometimes no more than a shot or two. I’d say this is one of the organizing principles of the film - how to convey what could have been much longer stories into short moments - quite the self-challenge for a film-maker certainly not averse to stretching things out when the occasions arise, which in other films has certainly been often. Maybe as the 80’s saw the rise of music videos, Wiseman took a chance at playing with little montages and snappy editing. I would bet that there are more shots in Central Park than any of his other films so far, even including the double-in-length-compared-to-this Near Death. And it’s not just brief shots, but the ways what’s here still indicate that there are big stories that could have been told, but are just suggested. It makes Central Park an extremely visual film - besides more shots there’s probably less talking than in all other Wiseman films, even though we do get a good bunch of meetings tossed in. This style is really just something to be noticed rather than me describing, but here’s a quick list of a few of these compressions, visual experiments, and/or montage sequences, a few from the many dozens in the film.
1. You wouldn’t think the trash yard would be a chance for some quick visual beauty, but there’s a woman there who hand paints “Trash Only” in an artful script on a series of trash cans. There’s a movie in the shot or two we see for sure.
2. When we get to Doug E. Fresh from the folk dancers, there’s a single shot of a woman dancing in and out of the frame - a little Wiseman art movie that could have gone on much longer.
3. We do see the in-park police station, and in amazingly quick order we see a guy taken in and processed for selling drugs.
4. I love the workers positioning mosaic pieces of stone along a path - also in just a couple of shots. Wiseman looks very interested very quickly in the process of fitting pieces together - something of course he’s doing himself!
5. Montages of like images pop up often, though never for more than a minute or so. They look like small homages to other city films, which have long gone for this sort of thing (Ivens, Vertov, Ruttmann, etc, etc). I especially like the montage of umbrella walkers, and there are several nice ones of birds. The film abounds with short sequences of sunbathers, bench sitters, and other walkers, usually with a visual theme apparent.
6. This is a big film for a Wiseman favorite visual preoccupation - watching workers who are cleaners and fixers. Best of these are two guys who go up on ropes to repair trees. The angles on them are artful - looking up with the sun shining through the leaves. Real quick again, but there’s a movie here too.
7. A quick adventure is the saving of a turtle stuck too high on rocks - saved by some passersby. Compressed into maybe thirty seconds.
8. Bird watching gets its due too, but in little bursts. (Same way that kids jumping ropes are seen a few times, fast each time.) My fave here is the woman watching through a telescope who claims to see two ants running around.
Like I said, there’s loads of these, but hopefully that gives the idea.
There’s a ton of stuff I never got around to - the AIDS Quilt, Mayor Koch’s two appearances (one with a Cardinal), marathons, and so much more. If you might have ever had doubt about how much of Wiseman’s films are due to how he films them and puts them together (rather than just admiring the so-called “content”), this is the one to give consideration to as you enjoy it.